Defining human security is important because it determines how attention is to be focused on the individual and groups. The argument has been largely about whether the UNDP focus is simply too broad to have any useful analytical application and whether it risks making everything and anything a potential security issue. It has also raised questions as to whether human security is an extension of the development agenda, the security agenda or a hybrid of both.32
After wide consultation, the Japanese funded Commission on Human Security came up with a new broad definition of human security as protection of “… the vital core of all human lives in ways that enhance human freedoms and human fulfilment. …Human security means protecting fundamental freedoms – freedoms that are the essence of life. It means protecting people from critical (severe) and pervasive (widespread) threats and situations…”33 The Commission also noted that individuals and societies may have different views on what is “vital” and what constitutes the “essence of life” and went on to add that creating human security meant “… using processes that build on people’s strengths and aspirations. It means creating political, social, environmental, economic, military and cultural systems that together give people the building blocks of survival, livelihood and dignity.”34 Such a definition raised the obvious questions about what “vital core”, “fundamental freedoms”, “critical” and “pervasive” meant, and what threats and situations actually impacted on human security. Two studies in particular took up the Commission’s definition and refined it. Sabina Alkire defined human security as the safeguarding of “the vital core of all human lives from critical pervasive threats, in a way that is consistent with long-term human fulfilment.”35 She also suggested that human security be restricted to areas of possible downturns in the people’s situation. Taylor Owen modified Alkire’s definition to read the safeguarding of “the vital core of all human lives from critical pervasive environmental, economic, food, health, personal
32 Sara Edson, "Human Security: An Extended and Annotated International Bibliography,"
(Centre for History and Economics, Kings College, University of Cambridge: 2001), 7.
33 Commission on Human Security, "Human Security Now," (New York: Commission on
Human Security, 2003), 4.
34 Ibid., 4.
and political threats.”36 Yet what was meant by “vital core”, “critical” and “pervasive” remained unanswered; though they imply the identification of specific issues and some form of designated thresholds of severity necessary to constitute a human security matter. Surprisingly, Owen sought to omit cultural security from the list of security issues arguing that factors such as education and religion would not be active elements in creating critical pervasive threats, or affect the vital core of human lives. On the contrary, as seen below, anthropological studies do identify cultural factors as important to human security. Brown and Stewart, for example, also consider educational deprivation to be a human security concern, as do Sen and Majumdar who argue that a lack of education could confine one to the margins of society and to a precarious existence as evidenced by a demonstrable link between mortality, income and education.37
A much more open approach was proposed by Ramesh Thakur who argued that human security was composed of positive (freedom to) and negative (freedom from) freedoms, and that: “putting the two together, human security refers to the quality of life of the people of a society or polity. Anything which degrades their quality of life – demographic pressures, diminished access to or stock of resources, and so on – is a [human] security threat.”38
Other definitions developed by international commissions include that of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) which describes human security in terms of people living under conditions where “their physical safety, their economic and social wellbeing, respect for their dignity and worth as human beings, and the protection of their human rights and fundamental
36 Taylor Owen, "Human Security - Conflict, Critique and Consensus: Colloquium Remarks
and a Proposal for a Threshold-Based Definition," Security Dialogue 35, no. 3 (2004): 383. Owen is working on measures of human security and geographical representation of various human security indicators which will be mentioned later.
37 Amartya Sen, "Basic Education and Human Security," (Background Paper for a Workshop
on Basic Education and Human Security jointly organised by the Commission on Human Security, UNICEF, the Pratichi (India) Trust and Harvard University in Kolkata, 2-4 January: 2002); Manabi Majumdar, "Child Labour as a Human Security Problem: Evidence from India," Oxford Development Studies 29, no. 3 (2001): 279-304; and Graham K Brown and Frances Stewart, "Why Horizontal Inequalities are Important for Human Security: Two Case Studies from Southeast Asia" (paper presented at the Conference on The Anthropology of Human Security, Amsterdam, 29-30 August 2005). Brown and Stewart also propose categorising human security issues in terms of whether they are “conflictual” or “non- conflictual" which would also see them separated broadly into issues requiring long term development policy to address pervasive threats, or immediate humanitarian relief for critical threats. This approach seems speculative and has not been further pursued here.
freedoms” are assured. 39 The more recent Commission for Africa says that people- centred “human security becomes an all-encompassing condition in which individual citizens live in freedom, peace and safety and participate fully in the process of governance. They enjoy the protection of fundamental rights, have access to resources and the basic necessities of life, including health and education, and inhabit an environment that is not injurious to their health and wellbeing.”40
These last two definitions are important as they both clearly specify human security as a condition in which people ought to find themselves. The condition includes areas of protection as well as providing scope for individual and group action through rights and freedoms and, in the latter approach, participation in governance. They also both imply that human security is an international as well as a state responsibility. A point that will be taken up in following chapters.
Key aspects of the main human security definitions are identified in Table 2-1 below.41 It shows is that while most definitions follow the UNDP focus on providing safety and protection as the main aspect of the human security concept, the later emphasis has moved in the Commission for Africa and ICISS definitions to the condition of human security. Instead of protection from fairly vague notions such as “vital core”, “hurtful disruption”, and “pervasive threat”, later definitions include more concrete terms of people living in conditions of freedom, peace and safety, having access to basic necessities, and, importantly, being free to participate in the process of governance. Governance of course introduces the question of state responsibilities, but at the same time it opens the possibility of a more localised determination of human security issues which may be anything, as Thakur puts it, which degrades people’s quality of life.
39 International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), "The
Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty," (ICISS, 2001).
40 Commission for Africa, "Our Common Interest: Report of the Commission for Africa,"
(Commission for Africa, 2005), 392.
41 Thakur, "From National to Human Security," 16-20, also provides a comparison of some 20
definitions. However, for the purpose of the thesis, I have limited discussion to several key examples.
The functional aim of human security
The subject of attention Specific elements:
UNDP Safety from Chronic threats
Hunger disease repression
Threats under 7 headings to: Economic; Food; Health; Environment; Personal;
Community and Political security. Alkire safeguarding The vital core of human lives From critical pervasive threats:
In a way consistent with long-term human fulfilment
Owen safeguarding The vital core of human lives From pervasive: threats: Threats under 6 headings: Environmental, Economic, Food, Health, Personal, and Political
UNDP protection Pattern of daily life From Hurtful disruption Commission on
Human Security
protect Vital core of all human lives Fundamental freedoms Essence of life
From Critical (Severe) and pervasive (widespread) threats
and situations Human Security
Centre
protection Of individuals and communities From war and other forms of violence
Commission for
Africa protection Of fundamental human rights ICISS protection of their human rights and
fundamental freedoms Commission on
Human Security
enhance Human freedoms and human fulfilment
Commission on Human Security
to build On strengths and aspirations Commission on
Human Security
to create Political, social, environmental, economic, military and cultural systems
Give people building blocks of survival, livelihood and dignity. ICISS to respect Individuals for their dignity and
worth as human beings Caroline Thomas achieving Physical survival
Human dignity
Personal autonomy, control over one’s life, unhindered participation in the life of the community
ICISS condition Live in Physical safety, their economic
and social wellbeing Commission for
Africa
“ An all-encompassing condition In which individual citizens live in freedom, peace and safety Commission for
Africa
“ Have access To resources and basic necessities of human life - Including Health and education
Commission for Africa
“ inhabit Environment - Not injurious to
health and wellbeing Commission for
Africa “ Participate fully in the process of governance
Table 2-1 Comparison of approaches among selected human security definitions
Some critics complain that the broad definitions embracing both freedom from want and fear risks becoming little more than “shopping list” approaches whereby the label of human security can be attached to any “bad things that can happen” and mean anything to anyone.42 Such critics maintain that human security needs to be more tightly defined to be of any analytical use. Others argue that a narrow definition limited to freedom from fear can be more useful in practical terms;
42 For example see Keith Krause, "Is Human Security 'More than just a good idea?'" (paper
presented at the BICC 10-Year Anniversary Conference "Promoting Security: But How and for Whom?", Bonn, 1-2 April 2004), 4; and King and Murray, "Rethinking Human Security," 591.
asserting basically that conflict and violence represent a breakdown in human security and are easily identified and measured in terms of deaths and incidents of violence. Some go further and claim that adopting a broad definition means that human security would be unmeasurable since, as Mack claims, it would “conflate” dependent and independent variables under a single index.43 A narrow definition in this view becomes simply “the protection of individuals and communities from war and other forms of violence.”44
There are four main reasons for rejecting these criticisms of a broad human security concept. First, as will be demonstrated in the next section, the demand for a precise definition imposes far more stringent requirements on human security as a concept than is placed on the additional state based concept which, nonetheless, contributes to national security analysis and policy formulation in many countries. A flexible concept of security also allows it to embrace new issues such as environmental and economic security, migration and terrorism. Thus, the prospect that anything might be a human security risk has strong parallels in international security practice where, for example, definitions are broad enough for baby foods to be classified as a security risk in the context of international aviation.
Secondly, Mack’s conflation problem is something to be worked through rather than ignored. His “pragmatic” solution, as he is aware, simply sets aside the “very conditions that gave rise to it [violent conflict] in the first place” such as poverty, weak administration, poor infrastructure or declining GDP per capita.45 But, if poverty, weak administration and other factors represent threats to human security, they must in themselves be human security issues. However, as a counter to the “conflation” problem, Owen has argued it is possible to develop a framework for the measurement of human security issues based on livelihood factors.46 In the end, of
43 Human Security Centre, Human Security Report: War and Peace in the 21st Century; and
Mack, "Report on the Feasibility of Creating an Annual Human Security Report," Appendix 2, 2. See also Sverre Lodgaard, "Human Security: Concept and Operationalisation," accessed at http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hpcr/events/hsworkshop/lodgaard.pdf on 23 April 2005.
44 University of British Colombia header to its Human Security Centre web page “News from
the Wires” which focuses on conflict spots such as Sudan, Israel, Nepal, Iraq, and Chechnya.
45 Human Security Centre, Human Security Report: War and Peace in the 21st Century, viii, 4. 46 Taylor Owen, "Measuring Human Security: Overcoming the Paradox," Human Security
Bulletin 2, no. 3 (2003); Taylor Owen, "Human Security Mapping: A New Methodology," (PRIO, 2003); Taylor Owen, "Human Insecurity: A New Map of Cambodian Vulnerability," Cambodian Development Review 7, no. 2 (2003): 9-11, 16; and Taylor Owen, "Measuring Human Security: A New View of Cambodian Vulnerability" (MA Thesis Submitted in
course, human security in any form cannot be definitively measured any more than human rights or human development. Various indicators may be formulated by a variety of statistical methods using selected data inevitably based on a set of assumptions peculiar to the analysts involved.
Moreover, the identification and classification of security issues, their level of seriousness and whether extraordinary measures are warranted, are political decisions—not ones of statistically pre-determined thresholds.47 Similarly, identifying and addressing human security issues at any level is not only a matter of definition but also of political choice.
Thirdly, proponents of the narrow definition turn for support to the extensive econometric analysis designed to identify the causes of conflict. Nonetheless, while these studies highlight the decline in the number of civil wars since the end of the Cold War in particular, and suggest this is largely due to United Nations conflict resolution activities, they are far less convincing in determining the causes of conflict, and hence in advising how to prevent them.48 However, in terms of conflict resolution and conflict prevention (which are at the heart of human security narrowly defined) important econometric analysts such as Collier seek to restore or sustain human security through human development and livelihood improvement, which thus become unavoidably integral to human security.49 Only a broad human security approach can reconcile the interdependence between freedom from war and violence and its dependence on development and, as we shall see, human rights. This aspect of the definition in relation to the econometric analyses is considered in more detail below.
Finally, narrowing the definition (and particularly relying on statistical analysis) simply removes the opportunity for most individuals and groups to have a say in what constitutes their human security. It does this by excluding political issues such as poverty, health and education and by imposing threshold measures, such as the number of deaths per year from armed conflict, which are arbitrary and have no
Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts, B.A. Bishops University, 2000).
47 Barry Buzan, People States and Fear, 115. Or as Buzan puts it, “a matter of political choice
rather than objective fact.” Even if thresholds were used for administrative convenience, they would need to be politically confirmed by law or regulation to have social legitimacy.
48 Christian Davenport, David A Armstrong, and Mark I Lichbach, "Conflict Escalation and the
Origins of Civil War," (University of Maryland: n.d.).
meaning for people who may be threatened by conflict or violence and who have no access to the data in any case.50 These are measures designed for other purposes. This thesis, through its field approach, focuses on the matters of concern identified by the people themselves, how they are able to respond to them and how a wider community might help. In this context, it is highly likely that a shopping list of human security issues is likely to emerge. It is not for governments, aid workers or security analysts alone to decide from an essentially international perspective what are, or are not, permissible human security problems. As a working approach to human security in my fieldwork, therefore, I have used Thakur’s open form of definition that human security refers to the quality of life of the people of a society or polity and anything which degrades their quality of life becomes a potential human security threat. This approach enabled me to avoid predetermining the possible forms of human insecurity which might be identified. Later in the thesis, for analytical purposes, I will use the Commission for Africa definition. I will also demonstrate with my fieldwork data that the prioritisation of issues needs to be politically determined, as is the case for traditional security.51
On balance most commentators support the broad definition of human security. In 2004, Security Dialogue invited 21 authors who have previously written on the subject to respond to the question “What is Human Security?” Buzan and Paris were the main sceptics.52 Despite the academic support, however, the development of the broad concept seems to have been largely overshadowed in policy and practice by the political support and programme assistance given to conflict and violence related issues; other forms of deprivation are left to human rights and human development activities despite their close association with security. This separation is also consistent with academic debates concerning the meaning of security and the
50 For example 25 deaths from organised violence is defined as conflict while it requires 1,000
deaths to constitute civil war. Large numbers of deaths arising indirectly from conflict are not measures and are, thus, not pat of the calculus despite the obvious security threat to individuals.
51 I return to this issue below.
52 Roland Paris, "Still an Inscrutable Concept," Security Dialogue 35, no. 3 (2004): 370-72; and
Barry Buzan, "A Reductionist, Idealistic Notion that Adds Little Analytical Value," Security Dialogue 35, no. 3 (2004): 369-70. Mack is somewhere in between considering the narrow definition to be analytically sound while the broad definition may provide a useful recognition of the consequences of underdevelopment. See Andrew Mack, "A Signifier of Shared Values," Security Dialogue 35, no. 3 (2004): 366-7. For a summary of positions of all 21 papers see Owen, "Human Security - Conflict, Critique and Consensus," 373-87.
acceptability of a concept of human security and the implications it would have for traditional security studies.